Eleventh Grade Burns(4)

His voice took on a disgusted tone and rose as he continued. “They call it that—a task. Did your friend mention that? I suppose it must make taking the life of a person easier to refer to the act as a task instead of murder.”

He threw his arms up, disgusted and angry and acting very much like Vlad wasn’t on his side. “Just as referring to vampires as things and monsters must make it easier to stomach the idea of killing people who happen to have fangs.”

Vlad watched him, wide-eyed, slumping back in his seat. “Why do you sound so angry?”

Otis stood suddenly, and slapped his palms on the table, his eyes fierce. “Because I am! How can you defend him, Vladimir? How can you spare his life when he nearly took yours? He’s nothing, just a slayer, a foolish assassin armed with a wooden stake. They are the ones who declared war on us, and we have every right to defend ourselves when we know an attack is about to happen. That’s all Joss is, Vlad, another casualty of war. He just doesn’t know it yet.”

Otis sat down in the chair opposite Vlad, his eyes seething. “If you ask me, the world would be a better place without him and his kind walking around, free to do as they please.”

Vlad shook his head wordlessly. When he spoke, it was in near-whispers. “Listen to yourself, Otis. You’re grouping them all together and plotting their extinction. You sound just like they do. Maybe you’re not all that different.”

Otis clenched his jaw and pointed a stern finger at his nephew. He stood abruptly, pushing the chair sharply back from the table. Vlad instantly knew that he had gone too far, but he didn’t care. He braced himself for the words that were soon to come flying out of his uncle’s mouth. Hateful words. Words filled with venom and justification.

But the words didn’t come. Otis turned and walked out of the kitchen. When the front door slammed, Vlad winced, but only slightly.

The coin lay on the tabletop where he’d left it. Plucking it up in his hand, he spun it once more, and wondered if Joss had noticed its absence, or if he had any idea where it might be now. It had to be his, after all. There were no other slayers in Bathory. It had to be Joss’s coin. Maybe that’s why Vlad had kept it. Maybe that’s why he couldn’t stop looking at it.





3





UNTOLD TRUTHS


THIS ISN’T HEALTHY.”

Vlad blinked up at Nelly from his seat at the kitchen table. He hadn’t been listening but assumed she was referring to whatever it was she was stirring in the saucepan on the stove.

Nelly frowned and sat the wooden spoon on the counter. Yellow goo pooled around the end of it. “You’ve been moping around the house ever since Freedom Fest, Vladimir. It’s not good for you to stay indoors and sulk for so long.”

Vlad dropped his attention to the tabletop. There was little sense explaining how he felt. It seemed that each day was worse than the one before it. First, the situation with Meredith, then he learns that Joss is moving back to town, presumably to finish what he started over a year ago. And to top it all off he and Otis hadn’t been on speaking terms for almost a week, not since Vlad had turned to his uncle for his counsel and compared him to what Otis considered to be the enemy.

Nelly sighed and pulled a couple of twenties out of her purse, dropping them on the table in front of him. “Why don’t you call Henry and go see a movie or something? One last huzzah before school starts tomorrow?”

Tomorrow. Vlad had almost forgotten he’d be starting his junior year in less than sixteen hours. Meredith would be there. He hadn’t seen her all summer. Joss would probably be there too. As if it wasn’t bad enough having to face one of them alone.

Deciding that maybe Nelly was right, maybe he should go out with Henry, Vlad decided to give his drudge a call after dinner. Plus, it couldn’t hurt to ask if his cousin had finished moving in, or maybe changed his mind and decided to move to Alaska instead. He could simply go for a walk to see for himself, but there were two things wrong with that idea: One, he simply couldn’t risk running into Meredith, and two, he didn’t exactly want to be alone out in the open, where a vengeful slayer might be waiting.

He closed his hand over the money and met Nelly’s concerned gaze. “Nelly, do you think I did the right thing by breaking up with Meredith?”

Nelly wiped her hands on a towel and sighed. “I think that’s a question that only you can answer, Vladimir. Do you think it was the right thing to do?”